Abstract
Fifty years ago the principal reinforcement used in textile/rubber composites was cotton fibre. This has been largely superseded in the intervening years by rayon, nylon, polyester, glass and steel. In the most recent years a new high performance fibre specifically engineered to reinforce radial tyres and other mechanical rubber goods has been introduced under the trade name Kevlar. The fibre has been woven to provide a low weight 'soft' body armour, because of its high toughness. However, this property of the reinforcement has the disadvantage that when machining the material there is significant resistance and consequent wear of tools. The paper describes experiments aimed at the design of a hand held tool to allow accurate cutting of Kevlar/rubber composites, where it has not been possible to produce composites with the fibres preferentially oriented around the intended cut out. The effects of blade size, reciprocating speed and lubrication are discussed. Paper presented at the Int. Rubber Conf., (Gothenburg, Sweden: Jun. 1986). (A)
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 0 |
| Journal | Default journal |
| Volume | 0 |
| Issue number | 0 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 1986 |